Reform's seats came from the Tories, unsurprisingly, and like you say Reform won more of the popular vote than the Lib Dems (4,117,221 vs. 3,519,143; not a wide margin) but Reform also campaigned in many fewer constituencies where they didn't have to compete directly with the three largest parties (not to mention Lord Buckethead and the Monster Raving Loony party, their nemeses). So maybe they have lots of supporters in certain areas, but only in those certain areas.
Reform is not a serious political force in the UK. They only renamed themselves from The Brexit Party, but they remain a single-issue party that appeals to a tiny minority of voters. The majority of the electorate are much more concerned with real issues like the economy, the NHS, education, law and order, and the environment. Brexit wasn't even a particularly big issue in the last elections. Even the Lib Dems, who had campaigned for a second referendum in 2019, laid it to rest this time and focused on more recent issues like sewage spills in rivers etc.
Might I also hog the mic a little while longer to say that I, personally, am mostly socially conservative, and am absolutely appalled both at the Tories and Reform, who are nothing but right-wing populists and demagogues that do not care a jot about all the things that socially conservative voters care for: jobs, order, stability, lawfulness, the economy, family, etc. And let's not forget that it was Margaret Thatcher's Tories that got the UK into the EU, and did so because it was beneficial to the economy, trade, and the stability of international politics. Exciting the EU was exactly antithetical to conservative ideals: it was a radical act of self-mutilation.
Labour are now the conservative party, the party of business and fiscal responsibility (and sitting on your hands while you kick the can down the road) and that's why they took all the Tories' votes: because the socially conservative constituency got fed up with the Tories' antics and, the Brexit fever having passed, wanted to go back to order and stability.
> Reform is not a serious political force in the UK. They only renamed themselves from The Brexit Party, but they remain a single-issue party that appeals to a tiny minority of voters.
In the 2024 UK general election, they got 14.3% of the vote. I don't think that's a "tiny minority". And if that's a "tiny minority", then the 12.2% of the vote Lib Dems got is an even tinier minority.
The problem that Reform has, is that 14.3% is spread too thin geographically. Reform got 5 MPs from 14.3%, Lib Dems got 72 MPs from 12.2% – because Lib Dem support is more concentrated in particular constituencies, mostly in southern England.
This is a side-effect of first-past-the-post. If the 2011 Alternative Vote referendum had succeeded, then Reform would have likely ended up with more seats in 2024; although even with alternate vote, the seats-per-vote advantage that Lib Dems have over Reform due to their greater geographic concentration would have still existed, albeit somewhat attenuated. A more fully proportional system, such as those used by the devolved legislatures of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, would have attenuated that advantage even further–although those systems are still region-based, so even they may not completely eliminate it.
>> In the 2024 UK general election, they got 14.3% of the vote. I don't think that's a "tiny minority". And if that's a "tiny minority", then the 12.2% of the vote Lib Dems got is an even tinier minority.
I don't disagree. I argued that the Labour win was a landslide, not that the Lib Dems' result was one. Me and the OP were disagreeing about where the Tories' voters went: Reform, or Labour. I argued they mostly went to Labour and my reasoning is that Labour are now the party that best represents socially conservative voters.
I agree that FPTP is skewing results and Reform might have fared better in a more representative system. Then again, the Lib Dems may also have got more votes. There was a lot of discussion in the elections about "voting strategically" to oust the Tories and avoid splitting the "liberal" vote. Maybe with a more representative system that wouldn't be an issue anymore.
FPTP is an embarrassment certainly. I don't vote in the UK, I'm a bloody foreigner, but if the system was more balanced I might even consider becoming a citizen. It's stupid that I've lived in this country for so long and I don't get to say where it goes politically. Although that would require me to swear an oath of allegiance to the king and I'm a republican. It's a tough call.
There is no official definition, but generally (in a UK context) a "landslide" is a party winning a big House of Commons majority – like the Tories in 1983 and 1987, or Labour in 1997. And by that standard, 2024 was a landslide – Labour won almost as many seats as 1997, and beat both of Thatcher's records.
What I think what complicates things: both Thatcher's and Blair's landslides were big majorities backed by a big percentage of the vote (> 40%). And since the two things go together, even though quasi-officially it is about the first not the second, it is understandable how some people take the second to be part of the definition as well. For 1983, 1987, 1997, it doesn't make a difference. But then suddenly in 2024 it does – Starmer won a big number of seats, but only 33.7% of the vote – only slightly more than Corbyn's 32.1% in 2019, and actually in absolute terms over 500,000 fewer votes. This is because turnout dropped significantly in 2024 compared to 2019.
> Me and the OP were disagreeing about where the Tories' voters went: Reform, or Labour.
Given the drop in turnout, I think quite a few Tory voters just decided to stay home.
> I argued they mostly went to Labour and my reasoning is that Labour are now the party that best represents socially conservative voters.
That's not numerically possible – the Tory vote dropped by 19.9 percentage points, while Labour only gained by 1.6 points and Lib Dems by 0.6 points. A small minority of Tory voters switched to Labour, but any more than that and Labour would have got a bigger vote share than they actually did. The Tory voters must have gone somewhere else – and given Reform got 14% of the vote, it is obvious very many of them went to Reform.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4nglegege1o
Reform's seats came from the Tories, unsurprisingly, and like you say Reform won more of the popular vote than the Lib Dems (4,117,221 vs. 3,519,143; not a wide margin) but Reform also campaigned in many fewer constituencies where they didn't have to compete directly with the three largest parties (not to mention Lord Buckethead and the Monster Raving Loony party, their nemeses). So maybe they have lots of supporters in certain areas, but only in those certain areas.
Reform is not a serious political force in the UK. They only renamed themselves from The Brexit Party, but they remain a single-issue party that appeals to a tiny minority of voters. The majority of the electorate are much more concerned with real issues like the economy, the NHS, education, law and order, and the environment. Brexit wasn't even a particularly big issue in the last elections. Even the Lib Dems, who had campaigned for a second referendum in 2019, laid it to rest this time and focused on more recent issues like sewage spills in rivers etc.
Might I also hog the mic a little while longer to say that I, personally, am mostly socially conservative, and am absolutely appalled both at the Tories and Reform, who are nothing but right-wing populists and demagogues that do not care a jot about all the things that socially conservative voters care for: jobs, order, stability, lawfulness, the economy, family, etc. And let's not forget that it was Margaret Thatcher's Tories that got the UK into the EU, and did so because it was beneficial to the economy, trade, and the stability of international politics. Exciting the EU was exactly antithetical to conservative ideals: it was a radical act of self-mutilation.
Labour are now the conservative party, the party of business and fiscal responsibility (and sitting on your hands while you kick the can down the road) and that's why they took all the Tories' votes: because the socially conservative constituency got fed up with the Tories' antics and, the Brexit fever having passed, wanted to go back to order and stability.